Habits are the building blocks for expanding your life. That has become quite clear to me over the years. They can also can be restricting if you allow no variance. My opinion: You do your best, and if you get off track for a moment, get back on and keep on.
It is so weird to think of habits that I have had over the years that I let fall out of existence even though they worked very well. The last couple of years I have been trying to bring some of these back – daily yoga, music practice, learning new things as often as I can.
Today’s prompt has me trying to pinpoint what happened. What I mostly see is that every time I’ve expanded or made big changes in my life, that is a time when habits that aren’t critical to daily life disappear. Sometimes they come back when the dust settles, sometimes not. If they don’t, then I likely won’t think about them for a long time.
That seems to be a good trigger to look out for. I do a much better job these days of documenting and creating structures around my habits. I have quite an extensive daily reminder list on my phone that I usually review over breakfast each morning. I have things listed there that I am not likely to forget to do, but, if I do, then it will be there next time I go into my list. This is working for me for now.
When I realize that I have a backlog of reminders, that is a clue that I have slipped into some default behavior that is not helping me move my life forward in the way I want it to move. Finding myself on social media for longer than 15 minutes is another clue.
I don’t want to feel like I have to be doing something productive every single moment of my life. I also don’t want to unconsciously lose time. I suspect in a world where so many things are vying for your attention and your dollars, that staying aware and conscious of distractions will be an ongoing task.
I instinctively want to shield myself from distractions, but maybe there is a better way to integrate so that I don’t close myself off to new ideas and opportunites that show up in the midst of them. Time to work on that.